To me, Russia was exotic: A massive country, more Asia than Europe, but with a rich European heartland politically divided for years behind the iron curtain. Russia recalled to me images of Czar's, of a beautiful Anastasia, big fur lined hats, fields of snow and the sweeping vistas in the 1965 movie Dr. Zhivago. And perhaps nothing captured the sense of the exotic unknown more than the turbaned spires of St. Basils in Red Square.
In 2008, as a scientist on a NATO project, I was to go to Russia. We were going to a conference in Pyatigorsk, a small city (~140,000) between the Caspian and Black seas. This would be followed by a regional field trip and finally an expedition into the Northern Caucuses on the Russian side of the border with Georgia.
I was thrilled.
I began looking up Russia on the internet, and as surfing goes, one thing lead to another and I found myself faced with thousands of gorgeous pictures of Russian women.
Now I have traveled a lot, and there are beautiful women in many countries. In particular, the delicate exotic oriental beauty of the Asian countries, the ripe sensuality of South America (where I have not yet been), the sophistication of northern Italy or France, the healthy glow of Canadian women...a comprehensive list would take hours.
And yet.
Something about the photographs I was seeing sent signals to my reptile brain that I couldn't ignore. The pictures of Russian women promised both the exotic unknown, with a recognizable familiarity of Caucasian features. These days, I associate an underlying intelligence with those images, but in all likelihood, I was simply struck by the plethora of beautiful women.
Now I should say, that "Russian Women" usually includes all of the former Soviet Union: Russia, Moldova, Belarus, and especially, the Ukraine.
So for my first trip to Russia, despite the serious intentions of a scientific study, I now had a new, less formal inquiry in my mind; could the women be anything like what I was seeing online?
Time would tell...
JF
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